Elise_Jones
Chirping
- Sep 20, 2020
- 12
- 39
- 69
Hi everyone,
I’ve wanted chickens for ages and finally took the plunge during quarantine. Our family has six chickens of different breeds (White rock, red sex link, black sex link, buff orpington, Americauna, and batted rock). The red sex link, white rock, and Americauna have started to lay in the past few weeks. My husband and I and our teenage daughter are eating lots of eggs and loving it!
This is our first experience with pets, and we are enjoying how our little friends flock to us when we come out of the house. A few of them are especially friendly (the Americauna likes to fly up and land on our heads, although she hasn’t let us let or hold her much).
One of my reasons for officially joining BYC (which has been a great source of info for us) is that our buff orpington Nugget (our 18-year-old son named her) has a disability that seems to be impacting her more and more. From what I have found online, it looks like it could be valgas deformity. It has gotten to the point that she can put very little weight in her right foot, and often ends up leaning on the joint instead. She manages to get herself around the yard and painstakingly into and out of the coop via a combination of limping, hopping, and flying. I have looked at chicken wheelchairs, but they don’t appear to be designed for outdoor use, and for now she is, although sometimes a bit of an outsider, still part of the flock. A friend who was a vet has looked at her and says she is getting enough food and that there are no signs of abuse by the other chickens.
I watch the way she gets around and think it could be so helpful for her to have some kind of a prosthesis that she could lean on, since her right leg is elongated and out to one side. But I’m not sure how that could work and I have little bandwidth for chicken research at the moment. (I’m adjusting to life as a new professor in the COVID environment.)
I know there are related threads on the BYC forums. If you’re aware of any you would recommend, I’d love to hear about them.
Many thanks,
Elise
I’ve wanted chickens for ages and finally took the plunge during quarantine. Our family has six chickens of different breeds (White rock, red sex link, black sex link, buff orpington, Americauna, and batted rock). The red sex link, white rock, and Americauna have started to lay in the past few weeks. My husband and I and our teenage daughter are eating lots of eggs and loving it!
This is our first experience with pets, and we are enjoying how our little friends flock to us when we come out of the house. A few of them are especially friendly (the Americauna likes to fly up and land on our heads, although she hasn’t let us let or hold her much).
One of my reasons for officially joining BYC (which has been a great source of info for us) is that our buff orpington Nugget (our 18-year-old son named her) has a disability that seems to be impacting her more and more. From what I have found online, it looks like it could be valgas deformity. It has gotten to the point that she can put very little weight in her right foot, and often ends up leaning on the joint instead. She manages to get herself around the yard and painstakingly into and out of the coop via a combination of limping, hopping, and flying. I have looked at chicken wheelchairs, but they don’t appear to be designed for outdoor use, and for now she is, although sometimes a bit of an outsider, still part of the flock. A friend who was a vet has looked at her and says she is getting enough food and that there are no signs of abuse by the other chickens.
I watch the way she gets around and think it could be so helpful for her to have some kind of a prosthesis that she could lean on, since her right leg is elongated and out to one side. But I’m not sure how that could work and I have little bandwidth for chicken research at the moment. (I’m adjusting to life as a new professor in the COVID environment.)
I know there are related threads on the BYC forums. If you’re aware of any you would recommend, I’d love to hear about them.
Many thanks,
Elise
Glad you joined.
